>I think that the budgetary constraints forced the Russian engineers to look for the simpler, and often more reliable solutions whereas their Western counterpar

>I think that the budgetary constraints forced the Russian engineers to look for the simpler, and often more reliable solutions whereas their Western counterparts often took a more development oriented approach. You are pulling that opinion out of thin air with 0 basis in fact. If you ask me, a bunch of pressure hulls put together in one outer hull is a lot more complicated than a single pressure hulls. That can only be cheaper/simplier becasue the cost of labor is so much lower. Welding the pressure hull is extremely expensive. If you look at reliability, all 18 of the US Ohio class which were design/built starting in the 70s (while the Typhoon came out in the 80s) are still in operation and are slated to be replace in about 2020. None have had a catastrophic accident. They've had something like 130 succesful Trident practice launches in a row. There are a lot of signs that the US ones are the most reliable in the world.